The mobile app marketplace has truly become a digital jungle, a crowded, constantly evolving battleground where thousands of new competitors emerge every single day. Mobile app development is a complex process in itself, but that’s just the first step. Even after successfully launching, the arms race is only going faster.
Just consider the staggering numbers: according to Statista, in February 2024 alone, about 37K new apps were unleashed onto the Apple App Store, while a towering 52K flooded into the Google Play Store. That’s over 2,8K new apps fighting for visibility and downloads each and every day!
So, the truth is, your app is just one of countless options — how do you make sure it stands out from the crowd? The key is mastering app store optimization (ASO) techniques. In this article, we’ll explore the best ASO tools that can help elevate your app and give it the visibility it needs to thrive.
But first things first…
What is app store optimization?
ASO (App Store Optimization) is the process of improving an app’s visibility and discoverability in app stores, including:
- keyword optimization
- visuals
- app title
- app description
- user ratings
- user reviews
- localization.
The ASO tools provide valuable data and insights on these critical metrics to help refine and improve promotion strategy, which is crucial for boosting organic downloads and driving an app’s overall success.
And, yes, each tech startup leader would rather prefer their product to grow organically — the resources are usually limited at the very start, and user recognition is priceless.
Advantages of app store optimization tools
The key reasons businesses should use ASO tools go beyond just the obvious benefits of improved search results and conversion. Here are the advantages that provide something more: saving or money, or time, or efforts.
Data-driven decision making
ASO tools provide in-depth analytics on keyword performance, user feedback, and market trends. This data allows businesses to make informed decisions about app optimization in terms of product development and marketing strategies.
How does it work? For example, an e-commerce app used ASO tools to analyze top-performing search queries for similar apps in their category. This data allowed them to incorporate those high-volume, relevant keywords into their app metadata, leading to an increase in organic traffic.
Reduced user acquisition costs
An effective ASO tool can significantly improve organic app discovery, lowering the need for expensive paid user acquisition channels like ads. Like in SEO strategies, this is an investment for the long-term result, rather than a short conversion splash.
How does it work? Imagine, a gaming app relied heavily on expensive user acquisition ads initially. After optimizing their App Store listing through the ASO tool, they were able to reduce their UA budget by 40% while maintaining download volumes.
Ongoing optimization
App store optimization is an iterative process, and ASO tools make it easier to continuously test, measure, and refine various app elements to maintain a competitive edge.
How does it work? For instance, a productivity app ran regular A/B tests on their app icon, screenshots and descriptions using an ASO tool. Over months, they were able to improve the conversion rate from views to downloads by more than a half due to choosing the most relevant and attractive option for their users.
Key features of top ASO tools
When selecting an ASO tool, consider your app’s specific needs and marketing strategy. While all ASO platforms aim to improve visibility and performance, their capabilities vary.
Let’s explore the key features that make the tools for app store optimization game-changing helpers for marketers and developers.
1. App asset management
The best ASO tools enable centralized management of an app’s visual assets like videos and photos, providing tools to create, edit, and optimize them for better app store presentation. Product development teams can test and iterate on different app asset variations to improve appeal and conversion rates. Incorporating visuals created with AI image generators can further enhance your app’s presentation, making it more attractive to potential users.
2. Competitor analysis and benchmarking
The best tools for ASO equip developers and marketers to identify and analyze their app’s competitors, monitor their optimization strategies, and understand their app’s relative positioning. This helps identify areas for improvement and enhance existing promotion.
3. Cross-platform performance monitoring
Leading ASO tools track and analyze an app’s performance across multiple app stores, offering insights into download trends, user ratings, reviews, and other metrics. This enables comparisons between an app’s performance on different platforms and informs optimization strategies.
4. A/B testing of app listing elements
The best ASO tools facilitate testing different versions of an app’s listing elements, such as title and screenshots. This enables measuring the impact on conversion rates and downloads, noticing patterns, or identifying trends for better visibility.
5. Integration with install and revenue data
Leading tools for app store optimization integrate with other data sources, providing a comprehensive view of an app’s performance, including the impact of ASO efforts on installs, revenue, and other metrics. This data-driven approach enables more informed app monetization strategies.
6. Localization and translation management
The best ASO tools provide capabilities for translating and localizing app listing elements, streamlining maintenance of the versions, and providing insights into performance in different markets. So, you have access to a broader global audience, and, most importantly, understanding how to manage it.
7. Reputation management and reviews
ASO tools typically monitor and analyze user reviews and ratings, allowing teams to identify and address negative feedback, as well as manage their app’s reputation. This stage of analysis is extremely important for the overall mobile app retention, as user experience and engagement are delicate matters.
Top 15 best ASO tools in 2024
If you’re thinking about how to launch an app successfully, utilizing the right ASO tools is crucial.
To guide product development teams in navigating the evolving landscape of ASO, we’ve conducted an extensive analysis across leading industry resources like G2, MobileAppDaily, Capterra, and Business of Apps.
What emerges is a curated selection of the top ASO tools poised to reshape app visibility and user acquisition in the year ahead. Whether your goal is to dominate the charts or expand your global footprint, this authoritative list offers trusted software solutions for app store optimization:
- AppTweak
- AppFollow
- ASOdesk
- Appfigures
- MobileAction
- Sensor Tower
- Adjust
- 42Matters
- App Radar
- Apptopia
- Data.ai
- Storemaven
- SplitMetrics
- TheTool.
Are you ready to dive deeper into each of these best tools for ASO? Let’s go!
AppTweak — an AI-driven ASO tool
AppTweak is a comprehensive platform that is trusted by more than 2,000+ mobile leaders all over the world. It offers a wide range of ASO tools for optimizing apps’ visibility, monitoring their performance, and boosting conversions on the App Store and Google Play.
The main point is that AppTweak uses their own Atlas AI engine, exclusively trained on app store data.
🔑 Key features
- Competitive analysis: Spy on competitors’ actions, like metadata updates and A/B testing, compare revenue and downloads estimates, promotional content, in-app events, etc. against the apps from 100+ countries.
- Top ranking opportunities: Find opportunities to promote your app by identifying when and where it may be recommended, and understanding the impact of such features on downloads.
- Keyword monitoring: Track the ranking dynamics of the keywords driving your app’s downloads, as well as measure the effect of keyword optimization on performance.
- Market & trend research: Get the freshest data insights on market trends, industry best practices, and growth opportunities to help you stay ahead of the competition.
- Analytics & Reporting: Measure the impact of your ASO efforts on app performance, create custom monitoring dashboards, and connect them with the most popular BI tools.
💰 Pricing
AppTweak offers a 7-day free trial for their Essential, Grow, and Scale plans, which cost from $83 to $549 per month. Enterprise customers can request a custom demo. You can get billing discounts depending on the payment conditions.
AppFollow — an ASO monitoring tool for reviews
AppFollow is an all-in-one cloud-based platform for optimizing mobile app performance and promotion, trusted by Flo and Wargaming. It provides ASO tools for comprehensive app analytics, review management, and competitor research.
The main focus of AppFollow is AI-powered app reputation monitoring and automation.
🔑 Key features
- Keyword analysis: Identify the most effective keywords, evaluate their popularity and difficulty, and get recommendations for new potential keywords with the help of AI assistance.
- Visibility monitoring: Track the app’s search ranking positions for target keywords and analyze changes over time to secure the top spot. Get the alerts on the KPI changes.
- Competitor analysis: Study competitors’ keywords, metadata, and ASO strategies, and track their changes in top charts. Filter the data in a professional way to get detailed results.
- Semantic review analysis: Automatically detect key topics and sentiments in user reviews to optimize the app’s content for becoming a market leader.
- ASO A/B testing: Test different metadata variants and analyze the impact of changes on key performance metrics for finding your unique approach for success.
💰 Pricing
AppFollow offers flexible pricing options to cater to businesses of all sizes, starting from a free plan to $459 per month with an option to customize it. A 10-day free trial is available for trying the premium features for any teams.
ASOdesk — a set of advanced ASO tools
ASOdesk is not just a collection of app store optimization tools; it’s a comprehensive ecosystem designed to help mobile businesses thrive.
It provides a comprehensive set of functions to help app and game developers escalate their presence, engagement, and growth on the major app stores. The platform is used by over 300+ app developers to accelerate their businesses.
🔑 Key features
- ASO: Track your app’s positions, traffic, and the impact of product updates across different countries. As a result, you’ll be able to continuously optimize your app’s metadata and marketing strategy.
- Replies to reviews: Automate the process of responding to user feedback in the app stores and improve your app’s ratings. The intuitive workflow makes it easy to monitor trends and integrate customer sentiments into your product roadmap.
- Competitor research: The advanced analytics capabilities help you uncover growth opportunities by identifying trends, popular features, and effective promotion strategies used by your competitors.
- Top charts & store analytics: Discover trending apps, track popular keywords, and monitor key performance metrics in any country.
- Keyword boost: Become the top-ranked app for specific search queries by utilizing incentivized installs from real users. Using this feature usually drives more organic downloads.
💰 Pricing
You can choose from flexible pricing for both their ASO tools (from $124/3 mos.) and Reply-to-Reviews solutions (starts from $39/mo.) between 4 plans with increasing capabilities and higher cost, and a customizable enterprise plan for larger businesses.
All paid plans come with a 14-day free trial, allowing users to evaluate the platform’s features.
Appfigures — the best ASO tool for analytics
Appfigures is one of the top tools for ASO that offers in-depth app intelligence functionalities and review management capabilities. The platform has satisfied the demand for quality organic promotion of more than 200K companies all over the world.
The main focus of Appfigures as an analysys ASO tool lies in data, so that to help developers — from independent ones to publishing giants — to get the most of the reporting insights.
🔑 Key features
…
A complete description of the key features and the cost of each tool from this top list can be found here.
